Of course, if boxing can indeed be discredited by an out of ring scuffle, its name is already irredeemably muddied. The Guardian and the Mail both took the opportunity to run in one form or another gleeful summaries of past dust-ups, from Tyson and Lewis back to the racially-charged mid 80’s scrapping of Mark Kaylor and Errol Christie. It’s now pretty difficult to talk about the noble sport of the pugilistic gentleman with a straight face.

Where once the great showman Muhammed Ali used pre show/off-ring hype like an artist, whether to catch George Foreman off guard in the Rumble in the Jungle or whipping up long term media coverage around his rivalry with Joe Frazier, the practice has become cheap and often counterproductive.

There’s a larger point to be made here. In boxing, when the young sportsman’s lethal combination of wounded ego and high visibility blows up, it never fails to make headlines. No matter what the news agenda, there’s always space for one big bloke punching another in a room full of cameras. In other sports, the problem is just as serious, but the reportage isn’t always so obvious.

If a young footballer gets pissed in a club or a cricketer cheats on his girlfriend, it’s a matter for the showbiz pages, where it becomes distorted and often obscured in a whirl of gossip and lo-budget star effects. Presumably the great and the good of pro wrestling, archery and Japanese extreme quoits also have their meltdowns, but nobody gets to hear about them.

So we must let this brawl highlight the problems endemic, even inherent, to sport in the public eye. Take a young man from relative poverty, shower him with cash and turn him loose in the media circus and you’re sure to get plenty of buzz. However, in every case managers, agents, promoters and whoever else are directly responsible for a hell of a lot of damage. In Chisora’s case, the wounds are obvious- especially now that the papers are falling over one another to print blow by blow dissections of the whole affair. Elsewhere, they may not be.

This is a clear symptom of an avaricious media age desperate for easy headlines. Like 1950’s rock n rollers churning out off the cuff singles, sportspeople are pumped for every story they can deliver then cast aside. While the music industry learned the benefits of long-term artist development, the sports media have not. These figures could be groomed for long-term, high quality coverage. Instead, they’re turned loose to do as much damage as possible in front a cheering crowd before the bell rings and they’re left standing outside the stage door in the cold night air.

In this age of self-analysis for the British tabloid press, perhaps those in the business of creating stars would do well to give their methods a similar once-over. In the new media landscape, where one-off brushes become permanent black spots, there simply isn’t a place for the easy stunt, the pre-match taunt or the sordid photo exclusive.

Star of the show, however, was Naomi Wolf, who waded in calmly and with considerable dignity to point out that the dangers of breast implants aren’t exactly a surprise. As she said with delicious poise, ‘I wrote a book about this, which was reported in every major news outlet’. She referred to ‘twenty five years of data’, and told Milton, quite simply ‘if you don’t know this, you’re in the wrong job’.

As I subsequently tweeted, we should pity as much as we chuckle at the poor ministry PR pixie who seemingly failed to even google the issue before her boss went on air- bright eyed interns everywhere take note. However, there is something far more sinister than ‘Thick of It’-esque bungling here.

Looking into the issue following the debate, I came across this article from PR watch, 1996, which highlights in great detail that which we more or less already knew- that for as long as there has been data on the dangers of silicone implants, there has been a PR answer to the public questions.

Detailing Burson-Marsteller’s plan, and its execution over almost a decade, to rehabilitate Dow Corning’s shattered image following their 1985 Federal court loss with Nevada resident Maria Stern over her ‘defectively designed and manufactured’ breast implants. The plan, which went through several iterations in its quest to quell public outcry, refers repeatedly to a ‘long-term cover up’, ‘networking’ (read: buying out) respected members of the surgical community, and perhaps most shamefully ends up in a long term campaign to deflect media attention onto the minority of women who’d had breast implants as a quasi-necessary post-cancer treatment. It’s attitude toward the Cancer Coalition? ‘I scratch your back…’.

Of course, we saw no representatives of the industry on Newsnight the other night, we’ve seen few corporate statements in the press. That’s because, as anyone who’s spent more than half an hour in corporate comms can tell you, in a crisis the best action is usually no action. However, even the most cynical among us must call for those responsible to take some flack, rather than passing it on to woefully incompetent politicians.

What’s more, surely an attitude of controlled but truthful apology would benefit individual organisations as well as the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. With lobbying spend across the pharmaceutical industry reaching $115m last year, I dread to think what’s been splashed out already to the various delighted PRs handling this. Yet repeatedly the missteps of Big Pharma make the news. Each time, a pretty effective damage limitation machine lumbers into place, but cumulatively public trust has reached extremely low levels.

Perhaps if some of the spinners involved grew a spine and approached this situation with a new honesty, the long term effects might be of benefit to all. Then again, this is probably just the idealism of one who still believes publicity noise can be to the public good. Just pity the poor new junior researcher in the Ministry of Health- he won’t be going on any dates this valentines day.

The death of print journalism in its current form is a fact- the industry is in freefall. This continuous groundswell, augmented by the firestorm of Leveson, has turned the public- by and large- furiously against the journalistic profession. As the prevalence and standing of conventional print media declines, the PR industry will necessarily morph over years and decades into a hybrid beast, incorporating networking, influencing and social media as its key tenets.

Media of all kinds are almost by definition dominated by curiosity and novelty, with timeframes set by miniscule attention spans. Yet despite the undoubted importance of considering what’s next, we mustn’t forget the importance of what is, what we have already. While I’m aware there are many in the industry ready to gleefully welcome a lobotomised, castrated press, I can’t imagine anything more tragic.

From a PR perspective, no amount of saccharine, tame coverage can beat the engagement and story value brought by a great independent journalist getting behind you. A journalist willing to blandly spew out whatever a PR tells them may bring column inches for the client, but their copy won’t generate actual conversation. A fantastic journalist who gets truly excited by the recommendation of a trusted publicist will be the one to make or break a meme.

Aside from anything else, those with dedication to fact and authenticity- and the training to pursue it- will always be needed as mediators. Even in a world dominated by the chattering of the masses, someone needs to be present to sift through the torrent of useless information to find the gold, not just in terms of the truth, but in terms of what’s genuinely exciting, truly valuable.

An announcement on their website that “a spectacular name” was to sign for the club invited fans to watch the name’s unveiling on the team’s Facebook page.

Needless to say, an incredible amount of furore was generated and fans eagerly tuned in at the proposed time in their thousands. However, following a short video clip from FCB’s general manager Christian Nerlinger, fans were treated to a view of their own Facebook profile picture, followed by their own name on the back of a Bayern Munich number 8 shirt.

Cue slow clap. It’s not hard to imagine the brainstorming session behind that one. The scene: a smoky little room, the unearthly glow of a dozen iMacs lending a superhuman sheen to the bearded mugs of the creative team. Who knows what blue sky heights they tapped into to get there, but the point is that when that eureka moment came and someone threw this ‘off the wall’ nugget of media disruption into the ether, everyone was clearly too busy congratulating themselves to think for a second about the fans themselves, and the ongoing, human narrative that would arise.

A football team’s stock in trade is the illogical, desperate and oddly beautiful passion of its fans. Football is not just another consumer product, and its fans are not simply consumers. Like the release of a Morrissey album or the unveiling of a new Pope, the transfer window is something that inspires interest and conversation that transcends the rational and borders on the obsessive.

In order to keep fans onside, buying tickets and following the team after the window has closed, the most important thing that a team’s communications need to do is inspire and retain trust. If the fans trust the team through and through, then no matter what disappointments or controversies come their way, they will stick by the team with religious ardour.

Ironically, of course, this ardour and support is something the stunt was clearly trying to acknowledge, and I’m not claiming that FCB was deliberately sticking two fingers up at its fanbase. However, the main shortcoming of creative is that it gets so wrapped up in its own genius that it forgets how the great unwashed actually think. In the eyes of someone who’s skipped a class or skived off that all important meeting just to watch the announcement of a name this is not a clever stunt- it’s a sick joke.

In short, the team weren’t thinking in narrative terms. They planned meticulously up to an initial moment of shock and disruption, but failed to plan for what would come after. Feeling betrayed and abandoned, fans have lost some of that crucial trust. While 20 years ago this may not have been such an issue, they’ll now whip each other up into a frenzy via social media, and likely leave in significant numbers.

I encourage clever media thinking, but when clever become smartarse, particularly in a supposedly grassroots organisation like a sports team, you’ve got disaster on your hands. Some good may come out of this fiasco if the suits who run modern sport can be made to see that.

Arthur Schopenhauer, that eminently quotable German, once said ‘We forfeit two thirds of ourselves in order to be like other people.’  In the past, I’ve occasionally prioritised the need to get the job over the passion for it. I’ve let myself and what I do be defined by what a client wants, rather than what my heart (and my more hard-bitten instincts) tell me I should be doing.

If you’re pitching without passion, it’s more likely than not a question of too many mouths to feed: unchecked growth leads to serious issues. In growing your business with limitless tenacity, the likelihood is that you’ll fall victim to the 33 and 1/3^rd factor: some unalterable law of the universe dictates that, left unfiltered, your employees will appear in three types, in equal proportion.

The first 3^rd are the stars, the challengers, those who grow the business with their unstoppable thinking and enthusiasm. The second are the support staff, the dependables and hard workers without whom the company could not continue day to day. Both of these are necessary components in the agency vehicle, whether it’s a slick ad world Beemer or a dependable in-house people carrier. Managing the ratio between them is the secret of a great corporate culture.

The last 3^rd are the hangers on, drifting through the day like fugitives clinging onto the sides of a train, only without the diligence or sense of opportunity. The overlarge organisation, or the agency which cannot fully define itself and stick to that definition, attracts an inordinate number of these energy sappers. Without a firm culture to define them against, it gets harder to keep them away.

If you’re questing after true efficiency, you won’t find it by increasing your workforce. Take the time to define the way you work now and establish the way you want it to change. Grow slowly and strategically, and you’ll be left with far fewer hangers on, and far less air resistance as you travel.

Even Blue Monday’s creator, pseudoscience wizard Cliff Arnall (who concocted the theory on behalf of Sky Travel), admits that it’s rubbish, but he also raises a good point. Blue Monday succeeds in getting British people to talk about their feelings far more successfully than any number of peer-reviewed journals. This, combined with the fact that practically every charity and a fair number of consumer PRs recycle the concept every year for their own campaigns, mean Blue Monday is here to stay, bullshit or no.

Somewhat more doubtful is the longevity of Jimmy Wales’s much trumpeted Wikipedia Shutdown. For those who’ve not heard, today bad journalists, students and bullshitters of all stripes will be without the iconic information resource until 5am tomorrow. In place of the site’s usual homepage will be a number for US congress.

The whole thing was devised as a protest against SOPA- the intention being to flood congress complaints lines with calls and generally take online direct action for maximum disruption. Of course, in the face of White House opposition it’s unfortunately looking less and less likely that SOPA will pass. A cynic might accuse Wales of trying to grab a bit of the spotlight and ride along with the zeitgeist a little way. Acting out against SOPA seems ludicrous to me anyway- as a lover and supporter of creative ideas and content, I like to see those responsible receive financial remuneration.

Whatever his motivation, Wales is making a big mistake. By preparing all parties prior to his act of disruption, he’ll fail to fully to capitalise on what could have been a great publicity stunt. If those affected by the blackout had no idea what was happening, they’d be totally hooked the next day by posthumous explanations. They’d tweet about it, and others would debate those tweets. As it is, the party was over before it began.

A potentially major conversation starter- the removal of the English speaking world’s primary go-to resource is alarming enough to generate real buzz- may go off half-cocked. By being afraid to genuinely worry people, Wales will stop short of genuinely exciting them too. As far as this might make life easier for supporters of SOPA, I’m happy, but I’m never pleased to see a great media happening go to waste.

As editors faced the muzak, a genuine tabloid legend’s coffin was making its way past a sea of solemn faces inside a dimly lit church in SW15. Mournful voices drowned out by the perpetual clang of a tolling bell heard moving tributes celebrating the life of ‘Smoking’ Sue Carroll.

When I first met Sue in my early 20’s she scared me to death. She was overwhelmingly glamorous, gritty and tough.  Gradually, however, my trepidation and the fear subsided. The more we did business, the more I learnt about the idiosyncrasies and the methods of popular journalism.

I treasured Sue’s friendship and confidence. Standing in the church fighting  back the tears I found it difficult to believe a constant presence in my professional life would no longer be at the end of the phone or available for an old fashioned lunch. Cancer corroded and finally consumed this vital human. Sue’s passing is significant, a metaphor, perhaps, for a type of journalism the like of which we will never see again.

Most importantly, Sue taught me to trust whilst correctively ensuring my words matched my message. Off the record gossip- no matter how compelling- remained firmly off the record. She never betrayed a confidence and remained true to her word.  On three occasions she delivered  some very bad news about errant clients. Thankfully she provided me with the time and space to gather my professional  wits before the deafening clamour descended from on high. It was never an easy ride with Sue, but it was always an honest ride.

The funeral and subsequent wake were portentous. Whether the gathered throng shared my observation or not I don’t know, but it felt to me like we were mourning the death of a whole profession. When I looked around that room at a collection of legends and old warhorses, I was brought shockingly down to earth. Many were unable to work, others were stripped of all their power. In short, the question was begged as to who was left to bring experience, temperance and morality to the popular press.

Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. Society is clearly angry about the dark art which trades as modern popular journalism. Alas a hunger for stories at any cost was overwhelmed by the malady of an ugly lycanthropy. It is pointless to posit a dewy eyed eulogy for newspapers and journalists, but it is a time to declare the game has changed.

It’s a fact that old media is in fast decline, that I will see the death of print.  Hopefully the legend of Sue Carrol will be preserved  and  cherished and not lost in the sea of detritus and the sins of a generation of lazy hacks

The values enshrined in the ethics of Sue should not be forgotten. It’s not an artifice to suggest that responsible journalism could be confident in a two way relationship between parties on different sides of the line. Any PRs rubbing their hands at the prospect of a neutered press are gravely mistaken- great content is about managing relationships with the mavericks and the enthusiasts. It is they who will produce copy to truly capture and excite the crowd.Sue and I United on BBC Breakfast

Once upon a time, Jeremy Paxton, owner of our client the Lower Mill Estate, received an earnest letter from the son of a prospective buyer. The letter, sent by six year old Leo Park, enquired politely as to whether the new house being designed for he and his mother, Jade, would have a chimney large enough to accommodate the weighty personage of a certain Santa Claus come holiday season. We persuaded Lower Mill that, as a self build service, it was their duty to fulfil his request.

What’s more, all parties involved agreed to appear before the media to bring this heart-warming Christmas tale to the eyes of the world. We helped Lower Mill and the media to capture the moment at which the chimney was taken for a test run, with a cheery Santa lowered into the chimney via a crane.  Lower Mill were prepared to go that extra mile to sell the house and raise a few smiles. As the old saying goes, you get the publicity you deserve.

From the Daily Mail and the Telegraph to Emirates 247, from CBC America to the Times of India via Radio 2, The One Show and plenty more along the way, the happening captured the imagination of reporters and audiences alike.

A dream story, but one which was an absolute nightmare to organise. Rarely have I appreciated to such an extent the value of a good client: Lower Mill uncomplainingly took on the herculean task of keeping Health and Safety happy.

Time is money, yet the estate’s building company were forced to cease activity for the day as their staff could not be allowed to work around such maverick goings on. Jeremy Paxton had to personally assume the title of health and safety executive for the day to keep the insurers happy, a role which involved him personally going down the chimney before Santa. Finding a crane company willing to lift humans was an odyssey in and of itself: turns out there’s only one in England, and they don’t operate without a fully qualified driver and banksman onsite at all times.

The struggle of operating PR within the new economy is mammoth both for agencies and for clients. In simpler times, I took an elephant for a walk, had motorbikes driven through traffic, dangled circus performers by their hair, wrapped houses and helicopters, staged custard pie fights and swordfighting workshops, built chocolate billboards and had a full-blown party in a fish and chip shop. For all of them I had the full support of the client- always a necessity- and yet rarely were we asked to justify ourselves as much as we were this month, dropping one Santa into his most natural of habitats.

Social media and all the other new age publicity concepts have a huge role to play, but you still haven’t achieved real traction until you’ve brought something into the physical world, an increasingly fraught process. When I’m called upon to judge the PRWeek awards and other industry gongs, I always take the time to think about the sheer effort, belief and trust that’s gone into making remarkable things come about.

As the great Jim Moran once said, “It’s a sad day for American capitalism when a man can’t fly a midget on a kite over Central Park.”. The health and safety anoraks are closing, but they haven’t won yet. With the right client and a lot of chutzpah, you can still do incredible things. Just be prepared for the hard work, the stress and the heady joy if it succeeds.

So writes .com marketing legend Seth Godin in his piece “The Secret of the Web”. He’s totally correct. As anyone who has ever striven to realise an original idea knows, not only the media but those with the power in business and in society are professional cynics working to a very small time scale. If you want to create something real, you’ll have to spend a lot of time ignoring those who take your lack of results as proof of failure almost as soon as you’ve started.

It’s a thought that conmingled in my head over the weekend with the triumph of the pathetically named but surprisingly talented ‘Little Mix’ in this year’s X Factor. The audience got behind this somewhat rag-tag bunch because they got about as close to representing truth and single-minded determination as it’s possible to on the X Factor.

Media coverage has centred around their close intra-group relationships, and perhaps more importantly their relationships with existing stars. The tale of Geri Halliwell sending the group a bouquet before their final performance spread through the British and Scottish tabloids and highlights a crucial part of their appeal: these are individuals with respect for those who went before them and a desire to forge something similarly tangible. They’re the antithesis to the Frankie Cocozza model of empty fame.

Their plight is now clear, and one that every new brand- whether a teen pop sensation or a small scale start up- can learn from. One hopes that from the opportunity they’ve been handed, they’ll be able to plunder something sufficiently real to live up to their seemingly earnest aspirations- success in the true, not pre-packaged sense. However, from the outset they’ll be confronting a tidal wave of critics desperate to swamp them. They’ll also find a similarly formidable number of bigger and significantly more corporate fish looking to appropriate them into the cliché-ridden world of advertising contracts. In a year’s time, it’s sadly likely they’ll either have been hijacked by Tesco or be dead in the water.

Sound familiar? You’ve probably started a business, or even are still running one. You may not be splashed all over the tabloids or have Tulisa on your board, but you’ll have faced the same war on two fronts: the ravenous detractors on one side, the ravenous appropriators on the other. In our digital-driven world, speed is often considered to be everything, and not without justification. However, it’s vital to remember that perseverance is just as important in a market characterised by fresh or shocking ideas. Google, Apple, Facebook and countless other technological sacred cows have achieved great things by settling in for the long haul time and again. Even as I write, there are scientists at CERN firing particles around, hoping to prove a model they’ve been working on for 47 years.

Unfortunately, I can’t offer you any concrete hope, but I can press upon you something which is absolutely central. Your initial success, your first meeting, your incredible idea: these are only the doorways to true attainment. Like Little Mix, it’s vital not to be satisfied with a few minutes of cheap exposure. Shoot for what’s real. Hopefully one day you’ll end up more like the Spice Girls and less like Olly Murs, introducing younger competitors to camera with the empty smile of the truly heartbroken.

Of course, it isn’t surprising- everybody knows on some level that this sort of business goes on. The striking thing is how rarely it’s reported on. I’ve written in the past on the great media operator John Rendon, and the upshot of my thoughts was that many of those who do most to change public and political opinion succeed by remaining as invisible as possible.

Rendon managed to monitor and control the fallout from every major US military operation of the past 20 years, and he did so by making sure he personally made as little noise as possible. When he supplied the Kuwati welcome crowd with stars and stripes following its liberation in the first Gulf War, no media commentators celebrated Rendon’s role. Instead, millions saw an inexpressibly powerful image, seemingly created from nowhere.

Lobbyists benefit from a similarly shadowy modus operandi. The point behind legislation change is that it seamlessly and without friction benefits their client’s operation. Even a successful lobby isn’t much good from a PR perspective if everyone can see the wires. Any legislative manipulation washes poorly with the public, regardless of how sinister it actually is.

Lately, however, lobbying is very much starting to clear a space for itself on the news agenda. Across the pond, despite Obama’s much feted initial steps to limit scope for lobbying, the liberal media continues to pick up on the double dealings of his fundraisers. More humorously, headline-grabbers like this marvellous tale have done much to push this most mysterious of government processes into the limelight.

After the work of the Independent this week, we can only assume the same will happen here. Lobbyists are a prime target for a good handbagging by the liberal media, and in many cases not without reason. Many of the accounts bringing in the most cash are also hiding the most corruption. However, I wouldn’t want to see Bell Pottinger and others in their business run into the ground by public opinion- Lobbies are in many cases examples of the cleverest, most beneficial side of corporate PR.

Let’s hope that the public isn’t so invested with the crusading spirit of the Leveson inquiry that this reportage will turn into another circus. Democracy must be upheld, but hopefully without leaving too many casualties along the way.